“Battleship Potemkin” (1925) is a Soviet silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein. It presents a dramatized version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers. “Battleship Potemkin” was named the greatest film of all time at the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958.

Eisenstein wrote the film as a revolutionary propaganda film, but also used it to test his theories of montage. The revolutionary Soviet filmmakers of the Kuleshov school of filmmaking were experimenting with the effect of film editing on audiences, and Eisenstein attempted to edit the film in such a way as to produce the greatest emotional response, so that the viewer would feel sympathy for the rebellious sailors of the Battleship Potemkin and hatred for their overlords. In the manner of most propaganda, the characterization is simple, so that the audience could clearly see with whom they should sympathize.

One of the most celebrated scenes in the film is the massacre of civilians on the Odessa Steps. This sequence has been assessed as a “classic” and one of the most influential in the history of cinema. The massacre on the steps, although it never actually took place, was based on the fact that there were widespread demonstrations in the area, sparked off by the arrival of the Potemkin in Odessa Harbour, and both The Times and the resident British Consul reported that troops fired on the crowds; deaths were reportedly in the hundreds. Film critic Roger Ebert writes, “That there was, in fact, no czarist massacre on the Odessa Steps scarcely diminishes the power of the scene … It is ironic that [Eisenstein] did it so well that today, the bloodshed on the Odessa steps is often referred to as if it really happened.”